


deep as the scar that’s under my skin

by tielan



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: F/M, Friends With Benefits, Friendship/Love, Post-Movie(s), Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-30
Updated: 2014-12-30
Packaged: 2018-03-04 07:33:47
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,179
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2995067
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tielan/pseuds/tielan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The stakes are higher than friendship - in more ways than one.</p>
            </blockquote>





	deep as the scar that’s under my skin

**Author's Note:**

  * For [fairiel](https://archiveofourown.org/users/fairiel/gifts).



> For the Captain Hill tumblr Secret Santa. I'm very late (and very sorry).
> 
> Not quite as fluffy as fairiel asked for; but I'm really bad at fluffy. (You wouldn't like me fluffy.)

 

The first time they have sex is after a mission.

Usually, Steve goes out for a drink with Rumlow and the Ops team. The alcohol does nothing for him, but the camaraderie’s important. And if Rumlow and the guys aren’t the Howling Commandos, well, it’s a different world and a different time.

He’s on his way back to the house out of which S.H.I.E.L.D. operations are run when he bumps into a woman too busy staring at her tablet to notice where she’s going.

“I’m sorry—Hill?”

“Rogers.” She glances beyond him as though looking for the rest of the team. “Early night?”

“It’s always an early night for me. No point in more than a couple.” He wants to ask where she’s headed, but that seems impolite. She’s probably on her way home to...a glass of wine? A good book? A guy who’ll ask how her day’s been?

In that moment, Steve realises he doesn’t know what it is Maria Hill does when she’s not at S.H.I.E.L.D – that it never occurred to him that she had a life outside S.H.I.E.L.D – and that he’s curious.

“Good mission,” he says, and immediately feels awkward and stupid for making small talk.

“Yes, it was.”

“I thought I’d go back to the safe house and beat up a couple of punching bags.” And now he’s babbling.

“They need showing who’s boss?”

“Yeah.” He winces and doesn’t try to hide it. “So I’ll just be on my way—”

“Rogers.” Hill puts out a hand to stop him going past. Steve pauses and meets her gaze, steady and unflinching. “If you’re looking for something to...work off your excess energy, I have a...proposal.”

It takes him a moment to realise what she’s offering. When he does—

He goes hot all over, something between sudden embarrasment and abrupt desire. “That’s, uh...”

“You can say no.” She sounds calm, and at first Steve wonders if this is all some kind of elaborate joke on him. Because out of the women he’s met since he started working with S.H.I.E.L.D., Maria Hill is the last he would ever imagine propositioning him. Then he takes a careful look.

It’s not easy to tell in the evening light, but he thinks she might be blushing a little – a faint hint of colour sliding down into the collar of her shirt. And the curve of her mouth is full and faintly self-mocking as she meets his gaze, frank blue in the falling evening.

“I don’t want to say no,” he tells her, and watches the colour darken against her skin. Proposition made and accepted; he doesn’t think about what it might mean. “So, where are we going?”

She jerks her head along the street, and Steve falls into step beside her.

They walk in silence for nearly a block, and Steve’s just starting to wonder if he imagined Hill’s offer, when she stops and catches his arm. “I don’t usually do this.”

“Good,” is the first thing that comes into his head. Then, “Wait. You don’t usually do sex? Or you don’t usually do pickups like this?”

Hill stares at him, her expression slightly disbelieving. Then she laughs. And Steve stands there with his hands in his jacket pockets, feeling a little foolish, but also feeling...good. It’s a little weird, but it’s a good weird, not a bad weird.

“Come on, Rogers,” she says, and slips her hand into his arm. “This way.”

It’s an attic room under the roof – bed, table, kitchenette, and a cramped bathroom. Steve can walk through the door without hitting his head, but the doorjamb just brushes his hair.

“I don’t think they had super-soldiers in mind when they made the attics,” Hill says as she hangs up her coat. “And it’s small, but it’s private. Do you need a beer?”

“Will it make this less awkward?”

She shrugs. “Maybe. Or maybe it’ll make it more awkward.”

“You’re not very helpful.”

“The deal was sex. ‘Helpful’ was not included.” But a smile flickers at the corner of her mouth as she closes the fridge and pauses by the table with a sigh. “This _is_ going to be awkward, isn’t it?”

“Um, ye—” Steve pauses as Hill starts unbuttoning her shirt, revealing a plain black bra that suits her no-nonsense style. “Okay.” A moment later, the shirt is hung over the back of the chair, and she’s moving past him to sit down on the bed so she can remove her shoes.

The question _what are you doing_ hovers on his lips, but it’s pretty obvious, isn’t it?

Except that Steve doesn’t want to do it like this. Casual, he can do, but impersonal? Never. He kneels down before she can get her boot off, hands closing over hers. “Please. Let me.”

He tugs off first one boot, then the other. Her ankles are cool beneath his fingers as he peels off her socks and tucks them into the tops of the boots before pushing them under the bed.

“There won’t be any room checks,” she points out.

He smiles up at her. “You never know.” Then, because he’s close enough and they’re almost at the right angle, he leans in and kisses her. He doesn’t quite kiss her on the mouth. More...on the corner. Why? Mostly to see what she’ll do.

What she does is shift her head that fraction so that her mouth is on on his. Delicate invitation turns to easy desire, and easy desire to hard demand.

They shed his shirt – she yanks it open, he shrugs it off. He undoes her bra, although it takes him two tries to get the little hooks free. Her nails are just long enough to scrape his nape, and she likes to bite. Which suits Steve fine – he just bites back.

She tries to hurry him along; but Steve decides he’s going to take his time. Besides, he likes the way she growls at him when he strokes and stokes, licks and tastes, touches and teases, until he’s aching and she’s threatening to finish the job herself.

“You don’t have a lot of patience.” He pants as she sheathes him, long thighs against his hips, their breaths mixing and mingling as she finds her seat on him – pleasure and torture, all at once.

Blue eyes flick up to his, febrile-bright. “You’d better have a lot of stamina,” is all she says.

Given how fast she orgasms once they’re moving together, Hill’s all out of patience. Luckily, Steve has a  _lot_ of stamina.

~oOo~

That’s the first time.

It doesn’t become habit, exactly. Habit suggests routine, and routine would make it obvious to others. And, so far as Steve can tell, nobody notices. Not even Fury.

Maria doesn’t ask him to be discreet, which Steve later realises is a big indication of how much she trusts him. Not that he’d shoot the breeze with the guys about this anyway. A lady’s privacy comes first, even when they tease him about his ‘monklike abstinence’, or try to hook him up with various random women.

At least once Natasha gets in on the act, she has the sense to suggest women Steve knows and has a hope of commonality.

Strangely, she never suggests Maria.

* * *

The first time they share a bed without first having sex is the night before they bring down S.H.I.E.L.D.

Maria doesn’t look up from the Triskelion blueprints when she hears footsteps pause at the door.

“You should be resting,” she says as she double-checks their entry into the Triskelion, trying to think of holes, weaknesses, things they might have forgotten in the planning stages. Formulating back-up plans, plotting out dead camera space.

“I will if you will.”

When she looks up, Steve’s watching her, his gaze steady and direct. The leader’s expression, not the lover’s one, and yet something in it makes her shoulders and neck go hot.

Maria has a room, and he bolts the door behind him. There’s a moment of awkwardness when he slides into the bed beside her, and she suddenly wants to kiss him. The urge passes and she chalks it down to habit.

Spooning is familiar – although they usually have less clothes on. And maybe he feels the awkwardness, too, because after a few minutes in the dark, she feels his hand tug at her shirt hem, before it slides in to splay on her bare belly.

~oOo~

She walks away from Steve after the fall of S.H.I.E.L.D.

It’s safer that way. Safer for him, as he tries to hunt down Barnes. Safer for her, as she tries to hunt down the remnants of HYDRA.

Safer for them both to get some distance from each other. He asked her to fire on him, knowing he probably wouldn’t survive. She did what he asked, knowing the stakes were higher than friendship – in more ways than one.

It’s better this way.

They’re Captain America and Commander Hill, and they never touched.

Still, as she chases down the leads on HYDRA, authorised by Stark, assisted by JARVIS, Maria finds threads that that might led to Barnes – threads that need pulling. She passes those on to Steve or Wilson, and keeps an eye on what they’re doing.

~oOo~

Pepper invited her to Cozumel for the holiday season, but Maria isn’t Happy – she doesn’t like playing piggy-in-the-middle.

Instead, she’s happy to have a very quiet holiday.

But the doorman to her New York apartment has a big smile on his face as he opens the door for her, and the reason is sitting on the waiting lounge, a duffle at his feet like a loyal dog.

“Hey.” Steve stands, a careful diffidence in his pose. “I’m sorry to drop in on you like this. I can go to the Tower if you don’t want company...”

A part of her is tempted to ask why he didn’t go straight to the Tower in the first place – he’s got rooms there, even if he’s never used them. She stifles it.

“Come on up,” she says.

“Sam went to visit his family,” Steve says in the elevator. “He asked me to stay but—”

“Piggy in the middle.”

“Huh? Oh. Something like that.” He glances at her. “You’re not going anywhere tomorrow, are you? I mean, you saw your family at Thanksgiving.”

Maria takes a moment to answer, mostly because she’s surprised that he would know. And then she realises he would have asked Pepper about her movements first. “No, I can catch up with my stepmother and my younger siblings another time.”

“Your brother’s still making the cracks about ‘stupidity work’?”

She appreciates Pepper’s defence on her behalf, but she’s not sure it was necessary for the other woman to tell Steve. All she says is, “Well, Josh gets an idea in his head and sticks with it.” And her next sibling down has never liked Maria much – their father had too much of an influence on him, and he grew up resentful without ever really knowing or understanding why.

The doors open at her floor and they step out.

It’s quiet in the corridor, not even any sounds of carousing. The complex is small but well-maintainted, private, and secure. Maria wouldn’t live there otherwise.

Her apartment isn’t very large, and he makes it seem smaller, pausing in the entryway as she rekeys the door locks.

“Maria. _Is_ it okay if I spend Christmas with you?”

“I wouldn’t have invited you up if it wasn’t.”

“Really?”

She eases past him, too conscious of height and heat, of the prickle across her skin as she puts her bag down on the dining table – full of papers and files and tablets – and turns to find Steve still standing, watching her. She’s not sure what that look means, but she knows it’s better to get the question of sex out of the way now.

“Are you going to share my bed, or did you want your own room?”

His answer takes a few seconds, his gaze on her face. Is he making a decision, or is he trying to work out if she’s just being polite?

“I’d like to share your bed,” he says at last. “But that’s entirely up to you.”

~oOo~

Maria leaves Steve working out what to make them for dinner and has a shower. Fort Worth to JFK was a long trip, made no easier by the rest of America travelling to wherever they were spending the holidays, and the hot spray is a relief after the cold outside.

She’s sitting on the edge of the bed in a towel, staring at her suitcase as she tries to remember what’s clean and what needs a wash, when there’s a knock on the door.

“Hey. I’ve just texted Sam to let—” He pauses and a flush stains his cheeks when he realises she’s not dressed. But he doesn’t back away either, just looks her in the eye with a sudden, blue flame in his gaze. “I left your name out of it.”

Maria holds his gaze for a heartbeat or a dozen, then drops the towel on the floor. And as he looks her over, all the way down and all the way up, the blue flame becomes a heated fire. By the time she’s crossed over to him to touch that warm, firm jaw with her fingertips, drawing his mouth down to hers, the fire has turned into an inferno.

Steve’s hands come up to receive her like she’s a gift, closing over her hipbones and pulling her into the cradle of his hips. His mouth is soft on hers at first, testing the waters before he decides to drown her in ferocious depths, hands cradling, fingers cupping, thumbs brushing. The muscles in his arms work as he picks her up and carries her to the bed, lays her down gently on the coverlet.

“You’ve got too much clothing on,” she tells him as he starts kissing fiery trails down her skin.

“Not for what I have in mind.”

What he has in mind is slow and heated, intense and intimate, hands and lips and tongue and limbs. Need and want and take and have, until thought is a distant memory. And the hot honesty of his gaze shoots through her like a bullet as he hooks her thigh over his shoulder and leans in to lick a long aching stripe through her core. “I missed you, Maria.”

Something like outrage sparks in her belly. She’s naked and open to him, and he has to say this _now_? From somewhere, she dredges an answer, blind and thick on her tongue. “I couldn’t come with you.”

“You can now,” he murmurs, and bends in to work her until she’s a writhing wreck of sensation, blind and deaf and mute to anything but all the atoms of the universe bursting through her skin.

Consciousness comes panting back, bare skin against bare skin, his mouth moving softly against her hair, the warm weight of him pressing down the mattress, rolling her up against him

Maria sketches her fingers down the length of his body, up the length of his cock. If she had any strength left in her, she’d reciprocate with a blowjob, but it’s all she can do to lift her lashes as Steve rises up over her on one elbow, a smile playing about his mouth before he leans down and kisses her.

“Still with me?”

“For the moment.” She manages to lift one thigh, crooking it over his hip, inviting him to take her. “Coming?”

“No.” But Steve slides his hand up her thigh, easing them over so she’s fully underneath and he’s holding himself off her with those lovely well-muscled forearms. “Just breathing hard right now.” And then he kisses her, slow and tender, presses his forehead against hers, and sheathes himself in her by exquisite and agonising degrees.

Maria fights the urge to writhe, to buck, to squeeze. She wants to make him beg and whine and groan the way he made her beg and whine and groan before. And she wants to wrap her arms around him and hold tight to a man who says he missed her – who she missed, too.

She shouldn’t have. He’s dangerous. Especially since this is more than mere loyalty, more than fuck-buddies, or colleagues-with-benefits – at least for her, and she doesn’t dare—she can’t let—

Then Steve’s riding her, splintering her thoughts with the deep thrust of his hips in hers, the heat and tenderness mingled in his gaze. His hands cradle her shoulders, run down her side to hoist her thigh higher, wider, to slide his hand between them in an explicit caress. His mouth comes down on hers, swallowing her gasp of his name, drinking her dry with his kisses and his nips. And Maria holds his gaze, strokes his spine, holds his hips, writhes and rubs and bites and squeezes.

Another orgasm takes her, long and shuddering. But the pleasure of it is in the way Steve shivers in her arms – _oh, God, Maria_ – in the way he strokes her down, in the way he sprawls on top of her afterwards.

When he finally eases off her, Maria bites back a protest. They can’t spend all night in bed.

Or maybe they can. Because when he finally moves, it’s not to get off her, just to raise himself up on his elbows. “Was I too rough? I’m sorry.”

She blinks. “I don’t mind rough from you.”

“Still.” Steve looks her over, his cheeks still warm. “You’ll have bruises tomorrow.”

“You’ll be the only one to see them.”

He winces. “I think that makes it worse.” Then he cups her jaw and his thumb strokes her lower lip. Something hovers in his eyes, before he drops his gaze and rolls off her. “Are you hungry? I’ll fix dinner for us...”

“Steve.”

He finishes pulling on his boxers, then turns towards her. His expression seems odd – a little bemused, a little pained. Maria nearly doesn’t ask: “What were you going to say?”

After a moment, his fingers twine into hers. “I really did miss you, Maria.” Another momentary hesitation. Then he bends down and kisses her, brief and sweet, before breaking it off, and getting to his feet. “I’ll fix dinner.”

And he’s gone, leaving Maria lying in sheets that smell of sex, with the imprint of tenderness on her lips.

~oOo~

Later that night, after dinner and washing up, after watching carols on television and a long, slow ride in the sheets, after the subsequent clean-up, change, and easing of herself into the intimacy of his sleeping embrace, Maria rouses on the edge of sleep to reach up and brush his cheek with her fingertips, checking he’s still there.

He is, at least for now.

“I missed you, too, Steve.”

It’s the first time she’s thought of it as making love.


End file.
